The solution to climate change --which is already happening and being suffered by millions of people around the world-- is in theory quite simple: to substantially reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide. The majority of those emissions result from the use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas), whose carbon was safely stored under the earth's surface. The extraction of vast and increasing volumes of fossil fuels is at the core of the current climatic crisis.
Publications
For many people around the world, the relationship between the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the future of forests appears to be difficult to perceive. The following briefing aims at assisting people to understand those links and therefore to facilitate their involvement in the struggle to radically modify the current corporate-led approach to international trade.
The World Trade Organization and Forests
Ten years after the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, forests continue disappearing at an alarming rate. According to the FAO, some 161 million hectares of forest were lost during the 1990's, which means that the average rate of deforestation remained basically unchanged compared to the one that occured during the 1980's.
The World Bank in the Forest
This book gathers a selection of articles published in the monthly electronic bulletin of the World Rainforest Movement (WRM), addressing the issue of the processes leading to the destruction of African forests and the struggles developed there to protect and use these forests adequately.
Given the widely ignored impacts of oil palm plantations and their widespread promotion throughout the tropics, the World Rainforest Movement decided to bring together research and local struggles in a book aimed as a tool for action. Given that the problem is present in Africa, Asia and Latin America, we chose three representative cases for each continent: Cameroon, Ecuador and Indonesia.
by Forest Peoples Programme, Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links and the World Rainforest Movement
To millions of people across the world today, the pulp and paper industry is a growing problem. The chipping of native forests to provide raw material for the industry is being opposed bitterly by local people and environmentalists from Australia to Finland, and from Chile to Canada.
This book includes a selection of articles published in the World Rainforest Movement's (WRM) Bulletin on the issue of industrial tree plantations. Given that the aim of most monoculture tree plantations is to produce wood pulp, we have also included articles related to the pulp and paper industry. In many tropical countries, tree and oil palm plantations have similar impacts --which result in similar struggles-- and we have therefore also included articles on oil palm plantations.
By Ricardo Carrere and Larry Lohmann
This book, commissioned by the World Rainforest Movement at its meeting in Delhi in April 1994, has its origins in increasing concern among non-governmental organizations in the South over the spread of monoculture tree plantations. It is intended as a tool for all movements alarmed at the social, political and environmental effects of these plantations.